Thursday (14 Oct) - Philly Points at Wild and CACKLES!

Thursday (14 Oct) - Philly Points at Wild and CACKLES!

While Wild was whining about not getting into the G2 ICC10 group on Wednesday night, Philly was busy on Thursday getting her Inscription act together. DER, you'll find some glyphs in the mail (if Blizzard ever lets you get the patch installed and get logged in.) Sis, better get your order in. Philly called in all her favors and everyone in the Wild family coughed up every herb they had. Philly has been crafting glyphs and getting on the sale-a-thon bandwagon to make a few bucks while she can and for as long as the herbs last.

The MM guild have three ICC raids a week, the two at night (G1 and G2) and one at noon (creatively called the nooners). The nooners raid on Wed/Thurs, just like G2 does. Philly happened to be in game when the noon raid came around. The raid expected to bring the same ten raiders they brought on Wednesday, so openings might not be there, but Philly paid close attention to the chatter. A couple of raiders from Wednesday didn't show. They had their regular tanks and healers. Any DPS interested in ICC? the raid leader asked. Philly raised her hand, batted her eyes (hard to do in that helm she wears) and whispered sweet nothings (which was more horrifying that sexy from an undead). Philly got her invite just so she'd settle down and not scare off the rest of the raid.

Soon enough Philly was in ICC hoping she would have some clue as to how to DPS as a shadow priest in the ultimate raid dungeon. Not only that, on Wednesday the nooners had cleared six bosses (you killed all the easy ones! she complained) and would be facing down Professor Putricide as her first task.

But! Yes, she said But! Guess who got into an ICC raid post patch before Wild? Philly! If Philly had a tongue she'd stick it out at Wild, but she had to settle for cackling maniacally at him. Wild took it in better humor than last night, but Philly knew she'd have to be on her toe bones and watch for any repercussions for a few days.

Philly was mostly ready. She realized she didn't have any mana water and there was no mage to make any. Hopefully she wouldn't have serious mana problems and have to beg some. She had a few flasks of spell power she'd slipped out of Wild's bags, and of course she had all her glyphs in place. Ok, now if only I could remember what my DPS spell rotation was, she mused. Philly planned to stay with the pre-patch rotation most often used since there were a lot of differing opinions on what should change. Shadow Word: Death was being spammed for a couple of days, and Blizzard then nerfed it since it was blowing things away. That's a dangerous spell to play with, too, since it has a backlash that does damage to the caster. Why, but why, though, did Putricide have to be first?!

It took quite awhile to get everyone into ICC. The way that works was completely changed with the patch and there were a number of glitches and work arounds to get through. But eventually we were all inside, ready to go.

Tackling Putricide as a DPS instead of a healer wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. Since ranged DPS and healers were positioned together for the fight, all of the movement requirements were the same. Target switching, always a shortcoming of the Wild family, only required switching between two targets - Putricide and either the green or orange ooze - and Philly managed that quite well. I think Mery might have helped with that as she has been target switching like a madwoman while out in Felwood killing beasts. Some of that must have rubbed off on Philly. The most frustrating thing about it, though, was having to stand still to cast most of her spells when she also was supposed to be moving with the others around her. That's one thing she hasn't quite got the hang of.

We did not kill Putricide, though. After four tries, the raid leader decided we'd go after Dreamwalker. Philly was pleased with her performance, however, coming in third in DPS. Her best single fight DPS was 4277 with the #1 DPSer getting 5251. Our overall raid DPS wasn't bad, just not good enough to bring down Putricide.

If Philly worried about the Putricide fight, she was twice as concerned with Dreamwalker. Wild loves this fight because he gets to go into the portals and can focus his entire effort on healing the dragon. Wild was barely aware of what was going on with the other raiders outside the portal; but Wild knew that the directions to the DPS were long and complicated. It was "if this mob shows up then kill it first, unless this other mob arrives then stop and go after him, oh, and this is your first priority - unless this other thing happens, then do something different." Wild didn't know how they were even able to tell the different kind of mobs apart, much less keep straight which mob to kill in what order and under what circumstances.

I'll tell you what, though, Philly learned fast. Philly was teamed up with a warlock and assigned to the left side of the room. Warlocks have a number of minions (specialized pets), and one of them, a doomguard I believe, would be used as a tank to keep the mobs from getting to us while we killed them. One of our two healers for the fight was Cr on her priest, and the other was also a priest who had never done this fight before. Those two would have portal duty. A third healer, a shaman, had to keep the rest of us alive.

The start of the fight was easy enough, the four archmages that guarded Dreamwalker went down pretty fast, and for a few seconds there were no new targets, so Philly cast some heals on Dreamwalker. She almost missed seeing the first mob come into our area, a zombie, but Philly had put focus on the warlock and I could see what she was targeting. Philly picked up the zombie target and opened up on it. It, too, went down pretty fast, but there were already two more mobs coming our way, another zombie and an abomination. Zombies were our first priority kill - unless there was an "abom" and that then became the priority. The doomguard was tanking the zombie, though. Philly spread her DoT (damage over time) spells on both mobs and when a tank picked up the abom Philly burned down the zombie. Things weren't going so well on the right side of the room and a raider had already died. We adjusted and kept going. The fight went very long, though, as the portal healers were having some issues and the dragon wasn't getting enough heals. We wiped.

We wiped on our second attempt, too, but we had our rhythm down and we saved Dreamwalker on our third try. Philly also won a fine cloak called [Lich Wrappings]. This fight was the most fun I've ever had as a DPS in a raid. By the end of the night I could easily tell the difference between all of the mobs we faced and which ones needed to be killed in what order. Philly felt like a sharp shooter, picking off targets with the help of the warlock as they rushed in at us. It was even more fun than doing the portal healing. I think we have the makings of a real DPSer in Philly.

That was all we had time for, but it was truly a blast. It also showed that Philly had nothing to fear about her gear or her abilities in heavy duty raids like ICC. She was definitely good enough.

When Thursday night rolled around Wild made sure he was in game early enough to ensure that they knew he was ready if needed. But that story will have to come in the next post.